Granpa
| Granpa | |
|---|---|
Screen shot of the title card
|
|
| Directed by | Dianne Jackson |
| Produced by | John Coates |
| Written by | John Burningham (book) |
| Starring |
Peter Ustinov (as Granpa) Emily Osborne (as Emily) |
| Music by |
Howard Blake Sarah Brightman Wroughton Middle School Choir |
| Distributed by |
Channel 4 (broadcast) Universal Studios (VHS) |
|
Release date
|
|
|
Running time
|
26 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
Granpa is a British family-oriented animated film that adapts a picture book by John Burningham. Produced by TVS for Channel 4 Television in 1989, it was released on VHS by Universal Studios in 1994.
An expensive film to produce, Granpa is hand-illustrated with coloured pencil, imitating Burningham's style in the book. It was directed by Dianne Jackson, who had previously adapted The Snowman by Raymond Briggs (1978), a wordless picture book, as an exceptionally successful family-oriented animated film (1982). Howard Blake, who wrote the music for the The Snowman, wrote the music and the script for Granpa, which is referred to as an "animated children's opera". The voices of Granpa and Emily are by Peter Ustinov and Emily Osborne.
Granpa won the Prix Jeunesse International award for excellence in children's television programming in 1990.
The animated film is an adaptation of the children's picture book Granpa, written and illustrated by John Burningham and published by Jonathan Cape in 1984. Burningham won the Kurt Maschler Award, or "the Emil", from Maschler publishers and Booktrust, which annually recognised the author(s) of one "work of imagination for children, in which text and illustration are integrated so that each enhances and balances the other."
The film opens with a photo album, showing Grandpa as a baby with his mother, him as a young boy, him as a young adult, dressed in WWII officers uniform beside a vintage car and his girlfriend, him being wedded with his wife, them having kids, them becoming an elderly couple, and finally with just grandpa with a baby Emily.
The entire theme for the film celebrates the relationship between a small girl named Emily (voiced by Emily Osborne), and her kindly but ailing grandfather (voiced by Peter Ustinov). Emily's playful innocence is contrasted with Granpa's increasing frailty. Aware that he will not be around for much longer, he shares his memories of adventures and days gone by.
...
Wikipedia